Warrior of the Wild(8)

She doesn’t realize I would give up his praise in an instant if it meant I could have a real mother. One like Torrin’s, who grieves every day for the child she never even knew.

A door slams, and I hurry to throw everything back in the box, pulling the stones from my ears and chucking them inside, closing the lid, and shoving it under the bed.

My door opens not even a second after the box slides out of sight.

“What did I miss?” Irrenia asks. She is only one year my senior and the sister I cherish the most.

“I snuck out of the house. Father blamed Mother for it.”

She opens her mouth, likely about to demand more details, but then she sees my face. “There’s a cut on your cheek, and what happened to your eye? Mother didn’t—”

“No. It wasn’t Mother.” She is not foolish enough to actually strike me. Not when I am warrior trained.

Irrenia enters the room fully, gets behind me, and steers me down the hall. “Tell me everything.”

I do so as she plunks me into a chair in her room and digs in one of her drawers for some sort of salve. She rubs it onto my swollen eye, and it begins to twitch from the stinging sensation caused by the salve.

“Ow,” I say.

“Oh hush. It’ll feel better in a moment.”

I close my other eye and take in the rich scent of Irrenia’s room. She does not work at the jewelers with everyone else. Irrenia trained to become a healer. She passed her trial just last year, but she’s already the best with medicine in the village. Her room is filled with her own concoctions, and it smells of soothing herbs. Lately she’s been experimenting with ziken venom, trying to find a way to make the warriors immune to their paralyzing bite.

Irrenia has the kindest spirit of anyone I know, which is why she is always home so late. She can’t bear to turn away those who are sick or injured. She continues to work each day until she has no more patients or until she drops from exhaustion.

Though I still cannot open my injured eye, the stinging sensation abates, replaced by a soothing numbness.

She rubs more salve onto the wound, and I finish telling her everything that happened tonight, leaving out no details.

“Sneaking out was stupid,” she says when I’m finished. “There are a hundred different ways you could have been injured or killed. I’m just relieved a punch to the face is the worst of your injuries. What if you’d run into the ziken in the wild? We wouldn’t have even recognized your remains in the morning! And what would happen to Father then?”

“Oh yes, poor Father. Whatever would he do without an heir to carry on his legacy?”

“He loves you, Rasmira. It would break him to see you go.”

Because of his own investment in me. It has nothing to do with me as a person.

“At least Mother would be happy then,” I say.

She flicks my swollen eye with a finger.

I let out a sound that probably wakes Ashari over in the next room. “What the hell, Irrenia!” I cup a hand gently over my eye.

“I don’t want to hear you talking like that. Everyone has problems. Don’t make Mother’s and Father’s your own. You are not at fault for anything.” She puts a finger under my chin to raise my eyes to hers. “I love you. It sounds like that boy of yours is quite fond of you. Your instructors adore you. But even if they didn’t, it doesn’t matter. You are worthy of love. Not everyone knows how to love the right way. But you remember how that feels and vow never to do it to others.”

“You’re awfully wise, you know that?” I say. “And you’re the kindest person I know.” I tell her that last part every day. If there is anyone who deserves a place of honor in Rexasena’s Paradise, it is Irrenia. And I remind the goddess every day through my compliments.

“Enough about me,” Irrenia says. “Let’s discuss how we’re going to get this boy to kiss you.”





CHAPTER


3


Despite all of Irrenia’s wild ideas (“Find a way to get trapped in a dark, tight spot with him,” “Pretend to trip in his direction so he has to catch you with your lips inches from his,” and “Tell him you’ve got something stuck in your eye, and you need him to take a look”), I’ve decided that I will not wait any longer for Torrin to make the first move.

I’m going to kiss him.

As soon as we’ve both passed our trial—it’s the perfect moment.

I fall asleep on the floor of my room with that thought in my mind. The next morning, I take some satisfaction in my aching back and neck. Torrin had to stay up all night. I’d tried to do the same, but at least I can say I’m being punished for my part.

I do not need long to prepare myself in the morning. I wash myself down with a rag and soapy water, put on a fresh set of warm hides, buckle my boots, and then survey my armor lying out on the far table. Our metalsmiths pound iron into flat sheets and shape them to our bodies. Mine fit perfectly, and I take pride in the simple act of donning them each morning. I like to start at the bottom and work my way up. First come the greaves, which consist of two separate sheets for each lower leg and slide into thin openings in my leathers. I curve one over the top of each shin; the other two slide over my calves. The thigh guards are a bit trickier due to the size, but they slide on the same way. I pull my breastplate over my head and tighten the straps, remembering the embarrassment on Father’s face when the smithy had to round it out more for my breasts. My forearm and upper arm guards go on next.